“
We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents...Sometimes the 'unfinisheds' are among the most beautiful symphonies.
”
”
Viktor E. Frankl (The Doctor and the Soul)
“
And I wake up happy, baby, because I possess beauty and I own that beauty in all the forms it can take and the least important of those are physical.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Knight (Unfinished Hero, #1))
“
If the Beast gave me a library like he gave to Belle, I’d marry him too.
”
”
Aya Ling (The Ugly Stepsister (Unfinished Fairy Tales, #1))
“
It's sort of like my past is an unfinished painting, and as the artist of that painting, I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again.
”
”
Lady Gaga (Lady Gaga)
“
Then and now, beautiful, I’ll take you any way you come to me … Any way. I love this Sylvie, I loved that Sylvie. I just love you, baby.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Creed (Unfinished Hero, #2))
“
Beauty,” he whispered.
“What?” I asked.
“Beauty. It’s pure beauty you don’t wanna be away from me. I don’t like that, baby. I love it
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Creed (Unfinished Hero, #2))
“
I don't want to walk out that door and lose what we found in this room."
His simple words rocked me. He wasn't declaring, he wasn't promising, but he said exactly what I'd needed to hear. We might not know what was happening, but we wouldn't leave it unfinished.
”
”
Christina Lauren (Beautiful Bastard (Beautiful Bastard, #1))
“
And the boys were behind me, a tide-wall of laughter and yelling, hugging my legs, tripping and grabbing, leaping, spinning, stumbling, roaring, shrieking and the boys shouted I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU and their voice was the life and song of their mother. Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything.
”
”
Max Porter (Grief Is the Thing with Feathers)
“
It's a beautiful war, baby." He dipped so close, the tips of our noses brushed but his eyes never left mine. "And I...just… won.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Deacon (Unfinished Hero, #4))
“
She’s beautiful, Dad. You see her, you won’t believe your eyes. You’ll think you’re dreamin’.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Knight (Unfinished Hero, #1))
“
Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishing frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain.
And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we image that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.
”
”
Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale)
“
This place was as confusing as King. Hard edges, unfinished and unrefined, yet mysterious and beautiful in it’s own way.
”
”
T.M. Frazier (King (King, #1))
“
Clinical psychology tells us arguably that trauma is the ultimate killer.Memories r not recycled like atoms and particles in quantum physics. they can be lost forever. It’s sort of like my past is an unfinished painting and as the artist of that painting,I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again.
”
”
Lady Gaga
“
At the dressing table, every woman has a chance to be an artist, and art, as Aristotle said, "completes what nature left unfinished.
”
”
Sophia Loren (Women and Beauty)
“
The only thing I'll never have is what I have lost for ever and ever... As long as I live, until I draw my last breath, I shall remember Asel and all those beautiful things that were ours. The day I was to leave I went to the lake and stood on the rise above it. I was saying good-bye to the Tien Shan mountains, to Issyk-Kul. Good-bye, Issyk-Kul, my unfinished song! How I wish I could take you with me, your blue waters and your yellow shores, but I can't, just as I can't take the woman I love with me. Goodbye, Asel. Good-bye, my pretty poplar in a red kerchief! Good-bye, my love, I want you to be happy...
”
”
Chingiz Aitmatov (Piebald Dog Running Along the Shore and Other Stories)
“
We all come into the world unfinished, still stitching ourselves together.
”
”
Maggie Smith (You Could Make This Place Beautiful)
“
Leaving him was less like leaving even the most simple of her friends in Flaw Valleys, and more like losing unfinished a manuscript, beautiful, absorbing and difficult, which she had long wanted to read.
”
”
Dorothy Dunnett (Pawn in Frankincense (The Lymond Chronicles, #4))
“
Human nature has its fatal weaknesses, but 'love' means embracing the whole of human nature, the bad within the good, the benign within the malicious, the beautiful within the tragic. 'Love' is the experience of this whole, its unfinished parts, including those of one's own in relation to those of the other.
”
”
Qiu Miaojin (Last Words from Montmartre)
“
Boys or girls?” “Boys,” he said again immediately, and I blinked. “Really?” “Babe, my life, girls?” He shook his head and kept shaking it when he went on, “Your beauty, even a little of it, you give that to our baby?” He stopped shaking his head and his fingers gave me a gentle squeeze. “Fuck no. I’ll need to buy more guns and hire more men.” I giggled. “Make me boys,” he ordered. I giggled again.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Knight (Unfinished Hero, #1))
“
It was my turn to let my eyes travel over his features. Take in his male beauty. Memorize it. Do it knowing that as crazy as it sounded, I’d never forget him. For reasons I didn’t know and would never have the opportunity to understand, there would always be a part of me that would long for him. There would always be thoughts in the back of my mind plaguing me, haunting me, making me wonder, if he let me in, even just a little, how it could have been. I stopped thinking these thoughts when the pad of his thumb whispered across my lips. That was when the tears pricked my eyes. Because I knew that was when he was going to let me go. For always.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Deacon (Unfinished Hero, #4))
“
I read a lot. I read because the vast wholeness of existence (the immeasurable, multifaceted beauty of what it means to be human) cannot be perceived through one life.
”
”
Mallory Smith (Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life)
“
Death is the opposite of lonely, and lonely is the only thing the janitor owns. It is the only thing that's hers. And that makes loneliness beautiful, out here among the cold and bright beginnings.
”
”
Amber Sparks (The Unfinished World and Other Stories)
“
Beauty bound. She was not a ghost who could be seen. She was a hostage in a lavish cage.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Sebring (Unfinished Hero, #5))
“
I've left behind so many unfinished quilts in my life, beautiful pieces of dreams and intentions never fully assembled.
”
”
K. Martin Beckner (A Million Doorways)
“
And so it was, that their beautiful love ended up being in the realms of the unknown, thrown to the future, pending, undeveloped, and unfinished. Always on the periphery.
”
”
Shahd Alshammari (Notes on the Flesh)
“
NINA
Your life is beautiful.
TRIGORIN
I see nothing especially lovely about it. [He looks at his watch] Excuse me, I must go at once, and begin writing again. I am in a hurry. [He laughs] You have stepped on my pet corn, as they say, and I am getting excited, and a little cross. Let us discuss this bright and beautiful life of mine, though. [After a few moments' thought] Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth--I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry for ever from one story to another, and can't help myself. Do you see anything bright and beautiful in that? Oh, it is a wild life! Even now, thrilled as I am by talking to you, I do not forget for an instant that an unfinished story is awaiting me. My eye falls on that cloud there, which has the shape of a grand piano; I instantly make a mental note that I must remember to mention in my story a cloud floating by that looked like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope; I mutter to myself: a sickly smell, the colour worn by widows; I must remember that in writing my next description of a summer evening. I catch an idea in every sentence of yours or of my own, and hasten to lock all these treasures in my literary store-room, thinking that some day they may be useful to me. As soon as I stop working I rush off to the theatre or go fishing, in the hope that I may find oblivion there, but no! Some new subject for a story is sure to come rolling through my brain like an iron cannonball. I hear my desk calling, and have to go back to it and begin to write, write, write, once more. And so it goes for everlasting. I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony!
”
”
Anton Chekhov (The Seagull)
“
She believes that her daughter was in agony and that she chose not to suffer; she needs to believe that through her death Kim now lives on a higher plane. "Why else are flowers so beautiful?" she says to me. "why is the sky such a perfect shade of blue? There has to be more than the here and now.
”
”
Jill Bialosky (History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life)
“
We cannot judge a biography by its length. Nor by the number of pages in it. We must judge it by the richness of its contents. Sometimes those unfinished are among the most poignant. We can not judge a song by its duration. Nor by the number of its notes. We must judge it by the way it touches and lifts our souls. Sometimes those unfinished are among the most beautiful. And when something has enriched your life. And when its melody lingers on in your heart. Is it unfinished? Or is it endless?
”
”
Vi Keeland (Left Behind)
“
A sheen of tiny drops, all of them trapped in the glow of the stoplight and reflecting red onto my hands and face and neck. It's beautiful. I'm beautiful. There's no one around to see it, but maybe that's okay.
”
”
Lauren Karcz (The Gallery of Unfinished Girls)
“
I hope this email finds you well I hope this email finds you calm. I hope this email finds you unflustered about your inbox. I hope this email finds you in a state of acceptance that this email isn’t exactly important in the cosmic scheme of things. I hope this email finds your work happily unfinished. I hope this email finds you beneath a beautiful sky with the wind tenderly caressing your hair like an invisible mother. I hope this email finds you lying on a beach, or maybe beside a lake. I hope this email finds you with the sunlight on your face. I hope this email finds you eating some blissfully sweet grapes. I hope this email finds you well but, you know what, it is okay if it doesn’t because we all have bad days. I hope this email finds you reading a really good poem or something else that requires no direct response from you. I hope this email finds you far away from this email.
”
”
Matt Haig (The Comfort Book)
“
The child was left alone to die in the hallway. Here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with Peter. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be.
The old man said, "Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, or the position of the electron. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain.
And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will?
The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once.
The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is. Everything that ever will be, is. In all possible combinations. Though we imagine that it is in motion and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. So any event is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible.
And, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.
”
”
Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale)
“
LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU and their voice was the life and song of their mother. Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything.
”
”
Max Porter (Grief Is the Thing with Feathers)
“
Maybe my life had caught on fire, but that’s where I shined, right at the melting point where I could take the molten remains and reshape them into something beautiful.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
“
This so frequent abortion of man's dearest projects must be taken as a proof that the deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety or genius, are without value, except as exercises and manifestations of the spirit. In heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then, would he add another verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here?
”
”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Artist of the Beautiful)
“
Opposite is the old bell-tower of a church, all the more moving for being unfinished. What beauty there is in interrupted towers, which continue in dream and which we all complete within ourselves!
”
”
Georges Rodenbach (The Bells of Bruges)
“
. . . no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. . . . no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.
”
”
John Ruskin (The Stones of Venice)
“
world has already begun. That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart—and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty. Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son? What in the world, in all this world, is grace? I can say it certain now: All is grace. I see through the woods of the world: God is always good and I am always loved. God is
”
”
Ann Voskamp (One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are)
“
It was my experience anyone could work anything. A man or woman could be what convention said was ugly or overweight, and if they held their shoulders straight, looked you in the eye and had a ready, genuine smile, that shit melted away. The light shone from within, and if you had the balls to shine it, all anyone would see was beauty.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Creed (Unfinished Hero, #2))
“
A habit that makes us humans. Hating life all the way to the end and when the death knocks our doors, We start to cherish live more and we wish if we had more time to do what we didn’t, leaving behind us our unfinished business. That’s why the death is painful truth and life the sweet beautiful lie. The death is the finish line of one long race that we started since we were born.
”
”
Hadir K. Gabr
“
Is it not rather ugly, one may ask? One collects material possessions not only for security, comfort or vanity, but for beauty as well. Is your sea-shell house not ugly and bare? No, it is beautiful, my house. It is bare, of course, but the wind, the sun, the smell of the pines blow through its bareness. The unfinished beams in the roof are veiled by cobwebs. They are lovely, I think, gazing up at them with new eyes;
”
”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift from the Sea)
“
The enemy of my soul didn't want me painting that day. To create meant that I would look a little bit like my Creator. To overcome the terrifying angst of the blank canvas meant I would forever have more compassion for other artists. You better believe as I placed the first blue and gray strokes onto the white emptiness before me, the "not good enough" statement was pulsing through my head in almost deafening tones...
This parlaying lie is one of his favorite tactics to keep you disillusioned by disappointments. Walls go up, emotions run high, we get guarded, defensive, demotivated, and paralyzed by the endless ways we feel doomed to fail. This is when we quit. This is when we settle for the ease of facebook.... This is when we get a job to simply make money instead of pursuing our calling to make a difference. This is when we put the paintbrush down and don't even try.
So there I was. Standing before my painted blue boat, making a choice of which voice to listen to.
I'm convinced God was smiling. Pleased. Asking me to find delight in what is right. Wanting me to have compassion for myself by focusing on that part of my painting that expressed something beautiful. To just be eager to give that beauty to whoever dared to look at my boat. To create to love others. Not to beg them for validation.
But the enemy was perverting all that. Perfection mocked my boat. The bow was too high, the details too elementary, the reflection on the water too abrupt, and the back of the boat too off-center. Disappointment demanded I hyper-focused on what didn't look quite right.
It was my choice which narrative to hold on to: "Not good enough" or "Find delight in what is right." Each perspective swirled, begging me to declare it as truth.
I was struggling to make peace with my painting creation, because I was struggling to make make peace with myself as God's creation. Anytime we feel not good enough we deny the powerful truth that we are a glorious work of God in progress.
We are imperfect because we are unfinished.
So, as unfinished creations, of course everything we attempt will have imperfections. Everything we accomplish will have imperfections. And that's when it hit me: I expect a perfection in me and in others that not even God Himself expects. If God is patient with the process, why can't I be?
How many times have I let imperfections cause me to be too hard on myself and too harsh with others?
I force myself to send a picture of my boat to at least 20 friends. I was determined to not not be held back by the enemy's accusations that my artwork wasn't good enough to be considered "real art". This wasn't for validation but rather confirmation that I could see the imperfections in my painting but not deem it worthless. I could see the imperfections in me and not deem myself worthless. It was an act of self-compassion.
I now knew to stand before each painting with nothing but love, amazement, and delight. I refused to demand anything more from the artist. I just wanted to show up for every single piece she was so brave to put on display..
Might I just be courageous enough to stand before her work and require myself to find everything about it I love? Release my clenched fist and pouty disappointments, and trade my "live up" mentality for a "show up" one? It is so much more freeing to simply show up and be a finder of the good. Break from the secret disappointments. Let my brain venture down the tiny little opening of love..
And I realized what makes paintings so delightful. It's there imperfections. That's what makes it art. It's been touched by a human. It's been created by someone whose hands sweat and who can't possibly transfer divine perfection from what her eyes see to what her fingertips can create. It will be flawed.
”
”
Lysa TerKeurst (It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered)
“
Pegi just recorded "I Don't Want to Talk About," written by Danny Whitten, the original Crazy Horse guitar player and singer who's all over Early Daze, an album of songs from the beginning of Crazy Horse that I have been working on compiling recently. Danny was every bit the artist I am, but he died of a heroin OD in the early seventies. Every time I hear Pegi sing that song, it makes me tremendously sad. She sings it so beautifully, phrasing it to break my heart. She does it justice. You can see I have some unfinished business with Danny.
”
”
Neil Young (Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream)
“
Also renowned is the beautiful painting ceiling of the cave at Altamira, in Northern Spain. This was the first cave art to be discovered in 1879. The art at Altamira, which has been dated to around 19,000-11,000 years ago, comprises stunning representations of bison, horses, and other large animals, with extraordinary use of colors and shading to indicate depth. The quaint story of its discovery details that the paintings, which are on a low ceiling, were initially missed by the team of archaeologists, but were spotted by one of the team's 8-year-old daughter; she was the only individual small enough to stand erect and still look up at the ceiling.
”
”
Kevin N. Laland (Darwin's Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind)
“
I was on my way to talk to Davis when the car hit me". . . . . . "A dark figure emerged from the shadows, half-lit by the glittering streetlight and the pale glow of the moon". . . . . . . "Huge black wings erupted out of her back like a blooming rose. She was beautiful." . . . . "I knew who this woman was.’Are you Death?'" . . . . . “'Most people have something holding them down to this world,' she said, 'like a tether on a balloon. It could be something material, a person, or persons, an unfinished goal. There are many reasons to want to keep living. I wonder, Juvenalius, what is yours?'
I smiled just thinking about it. 'His name’s Davis.'
Her hand stroked my cheek so gently I wanted to cry. 'Tell me about him,' she whispered."
And Juvenalius does. And you will be transfixed as Juve's first friend comes to life in his memory in this Tale with a gay twist.
”
”
JUVENALIUS
“
This unfinished play follows Myrrhina, an Alexandrian noblewoman, who travels to the mountains to tempt Honorius, a Christian hermit, away from goodness with her beauty and wealth. After they talk, he decides to return to sin in Alexandria, while she discovers religion and chooses to remain in the desert. Wilde had begun work on the play in 1894, between writing Salomé and The Importance of Being Earnest, but he was unable to complete it before his trial and imprisonment. He considered revisiting the play in 1897 after his release from prison, but he then lacked motivation for literary work, although during his imprisonment, it was much on his mind and he had described it in a letter to a friend as one among his “beautiful coloured, musical things”. Before his imprisonment, the fragments had been entrusted to Mrs. Leverson, who in 1897 went to Paris on purpose to restore the manuscript to the author. However, Wilde accidently left the papers in a taxi cab and now only a portion of a first draft survives.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated))
“
So often have I studied the views of Florence, that I was familiar with the city before I ever set foot within its walls; I found that I could thread my way through the streets without a guide. Turning to the left I passed before a bookseller's shop, where I bought a couple of descriptive surveys of the city (guide). Twice only was I forced to inquire my way of passers by, who answered me with politeness which was wholly French and with a most singular accent; and at last I found myself before the facade of Santa Croce.
Within, upon the right of the doorway, rises the tomb of Michelangelo; lo! There stands Canova's effigy of Alfieri; I needed no cicerone to recognise the features of the great Italian writer. Further still, I discovered the tomb of Machiavelli; while facing Michelangelo lies Galileo. What a race of men! And to these already named, Tuscany might further add Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. What a fantastic gathering! The tide of emotion which overwhelmed me flowed so deep that it scarce was to be distinguished from religious awe. The mystic dimness which filled the church, its plain, timbered roof, its unfinished facade – all these things spoke volumes to my soul. Ah! Could I but forget...! A Friar moved silently towards me; and I, in the place of that sense of revulsion all but bordering on physical horror which usually possesses me in such circumstances, discovered in my heart a feeling which was almost friendship. Was not he likewise a Friar, Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco, that great painter who invented the art of chiaroscuro, and showed it to Raphael, and was the forefather of Correggio? I spoke to my tonsured acquaintance, and found in him an exquisite degree of politeness. Indeed, he was delighted to meet a Frenchman. I begged him to unlock for me the chapel in the north-east corner of the church, where are preserved the frescoes of Volterrano. He introduced me to the place, then left me to my own devices. There, seated upon the step of a folds tool, with my head thrown back to rest upon the desk, so that I might let my gaze dwell on the ceiling, I underwent, through the medium of Volterrano's Sybills, the profoundest experience of ecstasy that, as far as I am aware, I ever encountered through the painter's art. My soul, affected by the very notion of being in Florence, and by proximity of those great men whose tombs I had just beheld, was already in a state of trance. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty, I could perceive its very essence close at hand; I could, as it were, feel the stuff of it beneath my fingertips. I had attained to that supreme degree of sensibility where the divine intimations of art merge with the impassioned sensuality of emotion. As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitations of the heart (that same symptom which, in Berlin, is referred to as an attack of nerves); the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground.
I sat down on one of the benches which line the piazza di Santa Croce; in my wallet, I discovered the following lines by Ugo Foscolo, which I re-read now with a great surge of pleasure; I could find no fault with such poetry; I desperately needed to hear the voice of a friend who shared my own emotion (…)
”
”
Stendhal (Rome, Naples et Florence)
“
...the letters begin to cross vast spaces in slow sailing ships and everything becomes still more protracted and verbose, and there seems no end to the space and the leisure of those early nineteenth century days, and faiths are lost and
the life of Hedley Vicars revives them; aunts catch cold but recover; cousins marry; there is the Irish famine and the Indian Mutiny, and both sisters remain, to their great, but silent grief, for in those days there were things that women hid like pearls in their breasts, without children to come after them. Louisa, dumped down in Ireland with Lord Waterford at the hunt all day, was often very lonely; but she stuck to her post, visited the poor, spoke words of comfort (‘I am sorry indeed to hear of Anthony Thompson's loss of mind, or rather of
memory; if, however, he can understand sufficiently to trust solely in our Saviour, he has enough’) and sketched and sketched. Thousands of notebooks were filled with pen and ink drawings of an evening, and then
the carpenter stretched sheets for her and she designed frescoes for schoolrooms, had live sheep into her bedroom, draped gamekeepers in blankets, painted Holy Families in abundance, until the great Watts exclaimed that here was Titian's peer and Raphael's master! At that Lady Waterford laughed (she had a generous, benignant sense of humour); and said that she was nothing but a sketcher;
had scarcely had a lesson in her life—witness her angel's wings, scandalously unfinished. Moreover, there was her father's house for ever falling into the sea; she must shore it up; must entertain her friends; must fill her days with all sorts of charities, till her Lord came home from hunting, and then, at midnight often, she would sketch him with his knightly face half hidden in a bowl of soup, sitting with her notebook under a lamp beside him. Off he would ride again, stately as a crusader, to hunt the fox, and she would wave to him and think, each time, what if this should be the last? And so it was one morning. His horse stumbled. He was killed. She knew it before they told her, and never could Sir John Leslie forget, when he ran down-stairs the day they buried him, the beauty of the great lady standing by the window to see the hearse depart, nor, when he came back again, how the curtain, heavy, Mid-Victorian, plush perhaps, was all crushed together where she had grasped it in her agony.
”
”
Virginia Woolf
“
Do you know what makes me the happiest?
When I see somebody's dream getting the light of morn.
When I see the happy giggle of a child with the most enchanting twinkle in that eye.
When I see the breaking dawn to watch the rising sun.
When I see a smile walking along the horizon painting the crimson rays of a setting sun.
When I see a sobbing heart finally taking a flight to a deep unknown within the canvas of its soul.
When I see the rain touch the earth and caress its voice in a mirthful melody of stories unfinished.
When I see a rainbow dancing along a silver lining of a roaring storm.
When I see the radiance on a freckled face of an old woman holding the hand of her forever old man.
When I see the moist mist of that coffee slowly becoming the poison of my muse.
When I see my wandering heart falling in love with beautiful lands and strangers of soulful cord.
When I see how Life is beautiful in all its breathtaking shortness marked in moments of happy surprise lulling across the door of my distant dream clutched in a canopy of dreams lived.
And now when I see that beguiling smile of Life, I know how happiest that stardust shines which twinkles in my eye and the soul of my distant dream.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee
“
Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr. Emhoff, Americans and the world, when day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry asea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried that will forever be tied together victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. If we’re to live up to her own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare. It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a forest that would shatter our nation rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. This effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption. We feared it at its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be a country that is bruised, but whole, benevolent, but bold, fierce, and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain, if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than one we were left with. Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the West. We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the Lake Rim cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough.
”
”
Amanda Gorman
“
city – from the beach to the Olympic hillside. For tourists who don’t want to grapple with public transport, there is the Barcelona Bus Turistic made up of three bus lines – blue, red and green routes that explore different parts of the city. You can get on and off at any point. Normally, I stay away from these double‐decker tourist explorers, but for a city as large as Barcelona, the system makes getting from beach to cathedrals to hillside parks very easy. There are also walking tours for those with very comfortable shoes. Barcelona offers so much to visitors that I couldn’t possibly tell you what to visit. But items not to miss are, in my opinion, the architecture of Antoni Gaudi which includes his unique cathedral, La Sagrada Familia which remains unfinished, his apartment building, La Pedrera which has no straight lines on its exterior, and his idealistic Parc Guell, a colourful complex on a high hillside. Within the city of Barcelona you could spend a day or more walking Los Ramblas, a wide pedestrian tree‐lined promenade that is a wonderful place to watch people, taste great food, wine and enjoy life. Nearby is the Placa de Catalunya, the main square with fountains, street artists and restaurants. The Gothic Quarter is walking distance with its network of squares that stretch back to Medieval and Roman times. This city offers so much – a medieval city, art museums, flamenco dancing, cable car to the top of Montjuïc, need I go on? Tours to local vineyards are available as are boat trips that will show you the local coastline. And let’s not forget that Barcelona is a city with beautiful beaches – all relaxed, lined with cafes and restaurants. The
”
”
Dee Maldon (The Solo Travel Guide: Just Do It)
“
Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given-so we track it, in linear fashion, piece by piece. Time, however, can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is-and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or, rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but as something that is.
”
”
Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale)
“
She could say that no longer. She was his wife in nothing but name: the privacies of his nature were not hers to explore and to analyse: she kept him as far as possible out of her thoughts, and conjecture out of his affairs. Leaving him was less like leaving even the most simple of her friends in Flaw Valleys, and more like losing unfinished a manuscript, beautiful, absorbing and difficult, which she had long wanted to read.
”
”
Dorothy Dunnett (Pawn in Frankincense (The Lymond Chronicles, #4))
“
With her love of finery, her unmade beds, her litters of unfinished scrapbooks, her taboos, superstitions, and prudishness, her remarkable dignity, her pity for the persecuted, her awe of the gentry, and her detailed knowledge of the family trees of all the Royal Houses of Europe, she was a disorganized mass of unreconciled denials, a servant girl born to silk. Yet in spite of all this, she fed our oafish wits with steady, imperceptible shocks of beauty. Though
”
”
Laurie Lee (Cider with Rosie: A Memoir (The Autobiographical Trilogy, 1))
“
The holy spirit of God’ she said. ‘Think of it, Celia. That is the great wonder and mystery and beauty of God. The prayer books shy at it, and clergymen hardly ever speak about it. They’re afraid to, because they are not sure what it is. The Holy Ghost.’
Miriam worshipped the Holy Ghost. It made Celia feel rather uncomfortable. Miriam didn’t like churches much. Some of them, she said, had more of the Holy Spirit than others. It depended on the people who went there to worship, she said.
”
”
Mary Westmacott (Unfinished Portrait)
“
There is no timeline you must follow. You’re not too late . . . you’re not too early . . . you are just where you should be at this moment in your life, so relax. There’s plenty of time to find love, there’s plenty of time to get married, there’s plenty of time to live happily ever after. And it starts by living happily now by embracing this version of yourself—this wild, unsettled, unfinished version of yourself. Every moment of your life and your journey is so precious and sacred, and it’s so very, very okay that it is completely unique and entirely your own. You don’t have to catch up to anyone or wait for anyone to catch up to you. You can simply go your own way and trust that everything meant for you will come in its perfect time, in its perfect way. You can stop viewing dating as something you have to do and start viewing it as something you get to do. You can stop frantically searching for “the one” and allow yourself to have a little fun. Breathe. Relax. Trust. Let go. Laugh. Smile. Live. Your life is unfolding just as it should . . . so stop trying to skip ahead to the end, and enjoy the chapter you’re in. And while you’re at it, remember that finding love is merely one chapter of your story. There is still an entire book of other crazy, beautiful, wild, funny, colorful, meaningful adventures to be lived.
”
”
Mandy Hale (Don't Believe the Swipe: Finding Love without Losing Yourself)
“
We have to stop spending our life waiting to be set free from this “prison” called singleness so we can finally join the ranks of celebrated coupledom. If society won’t throw the party for us, let’s throw it ourselves! Our unfinished, unwritten, imperfect lives deserve to be honored. Our life choices deserve to be recognized. And our singleness should be celebrated. We’re doing this life thing just fine alone, and if that isn’t brave and admirable and confetti-worthy, then I don’t know what is. I urge you to find a way to celebrate yourself and your singleness on a regular basis. Decide that you are going to be happy no matter what. Decide that you are going to make your dreams come true no matter what. And if those dreams include things like adopting a child and buying a house and doing things that people usually wait to do ’til they’re married . . . I want you to do them anyway. I want you to stop waiting and start living. Stop waiting for love, stop waiting for marriage, stop waiting for Prince Charming to come along and rescue you, and start designing a life you don’t wish to be rescued from. Life is short, and it’s high time to decide that, alone or accompanied, you are going to build the most beautiful life you can, and then you are going to revel in it. Because, guess what? You are the one you’ve been waiting for. You are the one who can make your dreams come true. You are the one, the only one, you will 100 percent definitely spend the rest of your life with . . . and it’s time to start making you happy. Not as a New Year’s resolution or at some lofty date in the future but right now. Because you are worthy of a beautiful life, and that beautiful life starts and ends with you. Don’t just accept your singleness—honor it! Appreciate it. Revel in it. Throw a shower for yourself and register at Target and Starbucks if you want to. But don’t keep wishing it away because you’re hoping and praying and longing for marriage. Stop letting the swipe rule your life. And don’t for one second allow society to cause you to believe that you don’t lead a life that’s worthy of celebrating. Whether your singleness is for a season or for a lifetime, there is great beauty, adventure, magic, love, laughter, and happiness right here in the middle of this moment. And I don’t know about you, but I’d say that’s worth a celebration or two.
”
”
Mandy Hale (Don't Believe the Swipe: Finding Love without Losing Yourself)
“
That beautiful Shirazi Turk, took control and my heart stole,
I'll give Samarkand & Bukhara, for her Hindu beauty mole.
O wine-bearer bring me wine, such wine not found in Heavens
By running brooks, in flowery fields, spend your days and stroll.
Alas, these sweet gypsy clowns, these agitators of our town
Took the patience of my heart, like looting Turks take their toll.
Such unfinished love as ours, the Beloved has no need,
For the Perfect Beauty, frills and adornments play no role.
I came to know Joseph's goodness, that daily would increase
Even the chaste Mistress succumbed to the love she would extol.
Whether profane or even cursed, I'll reply only in praise
Sweetness of tongue and the lips, even bitterness would enthrall.
Heed the advice of the wise, make your most endeared goal,
The fortunate blessed youth, listen to the old wise soul.
Tell tales of song and wine, seek not secrets of the world,
None has found and no-one will, knowledge leaves this riddle whole.
You composed poems and sang, Hafiz, you spent your days well
Venus wedded to your songs, in the firmaments' inverted bowl.
”
”
Ghazals Inspired by Hafiz's Ghazals
“
In reality," he told Paulina, after knowing her a short time, "endings are unworthy of art. Works of art are always unfinished. Whoever creates them is never sure of having finished them. The same is true of all the best things in life. Goethe, even though he was a German, was right about this: 'Every beginning is beautiful, but one must stop on the threshold.
”
”
Ángeles Mastretta (Mujeres de ojos grandes)
“
List of Elizabeth Lennox Books The Texas Tycoon’s Temptation The Royal Cordova Trilogy Escaping a Royal Wedding The Man’s Outrageous Demands Mistress to the Prince The Attracelli Family Series Never Dare a Tycoon Falling For the Boss Risky Negotiations Proposal to Love Love's Not Terrifying Romantic Acquisition The Billionaire's Terms: Prison Or Passion The Sheik's Love Child The Sheik's Unfinished Business The Greek Tycoon's Lover The Sheik's Sensuous Trap The Greek's Baby Bargain The Italian's Bedroom Deal The Billionaire's Gamble The Tycoon's Seduction Plan The Sheik's Rebellious Mistress The Sheik's Missing Bride Blackmailed by the Billionaire The Billionaire's Runaway Bride The Billionaire's Elusive Lover The Intimate, Intricate Rescue The Sisterhood Trilogy The Sheik's Virgin Lover The Billionaire's Impulsive Lover The Russian's Tender Lover The Billionaire's Gentle Rescue The Tycoon's Toddler Surprise The Tycoon's Tender Triumph The Friends Forever Series The Sheik's Mysterious Mistress The Duke's Willful Wife The Tycoon's Marriage Exchange The Sheik's Secret Twins The Russian's Furious Fiancée The Tycoon's Misunderstood Bride Love By Accident Series The Sheik's Pregnant Lover The Sheik's Furious Bride The Duke's Runaway Princess The Russian's Pregnant Mistress The Lovers Exchange Series The Earl's Outrageous Lover The Tycoon's Resistant Lover The Sheik's Reluctant Lover The Spanish Tycoon's Temptress The Berutelli Escape Resisting The Tycoon's Seduction The Billionaire’s Secretive Enchantress The Big Apple Brotherhood The Billionaire’s Pregnant Lover The Sheik’s Rediscovered Lover The Tycoon’s Defiant Southern Belle The Sheik’s Dangerous Lover (Novella) The Thorpe Brothers His Captive Lover His Unexpected Lover His Secretive Lover His Challenging Lover The Sheik’s Defiant Fiancée (Novella) The Prince’s Resistant Lover (Novella) The Tycoon’s Make-Believe Fiancée (Novella) The Friendship Series The Billionaire’s Masquerade The Russian’s Dangerous Game The Sheik’s Beautiful Intruder The Love and Danger Series – Romantic Mysteries Intimate Desires Intimate Caresses Intimate Secrets Intimate Whispers The Alfieri Saga The Italian’s Passionate Return (Novella) Her Gentle Capture His Reluctant Lover Her Unexpected Admirer Her Tender Tyrant Releasing the Billionaire’s Passion (Novella) His Expectant Lover The Sheik’s Intimate Proposition (Novella) The Hart Sisters Trilogy The Billionaire’s Secret Marriage The Italian’s Twin Surprise The Forbidden Russian Lover The War, Love, and Harmony Series Fighting with the Infuriating Prince (Novella) Dancing with the Dangerous Prince (Novella)
”
”
Elizabeth Lennox (The Sheik's Baby Surprise (The Boarding School Series Book 4))
“
If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given—so we track it, in linear fashion, piece by piece. Time, however, can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is—and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or, rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but as something that is.
”
”
Mark Helprin (A New York Winter's Tale)
“
day, in a gazebo by a river in the middle of fucking nowhere in the Colorado Mountains, the man known throughout the dark, harsh, fetid, hostile underbelly of this great United States as Ghost got married to one of the most beautiful women Nick had ever laid eyes on. She
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Sebring (Unfinished Hero, #5))
“
Very..." She left the word hanging. Very unfinished, thought Isabel. The woman finished her sentence. "Very beautiful." Oh, really! thought Isabel. The verdict from others was much the same. Oh well, thought Isabel. Perhaps I'm not sufficiently used to the language he's using. Music is not an international language, she thought, no matter how frequently that claim is made; some words of the language may be the same, but not all, and one needs to know the rules to understand what is being said. Perhaps I just don't understand the conventions by which Nick Smart is communicating with his audience.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (The Careful Use of Compliments (Isabel Dalhousie, #4))
“
Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given -so we track it, in linear fashion, piece by piece. Time, however, can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is -and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or, rather, as thins really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a wat as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but as something that is.
”
”
Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale)
“
Part 1- If I can do it, so can you.
I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. I lived under the communist regime where everybody was poor, there was no rich people visited the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down. for instance when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "when I get older I want to be a beautician" with a smire on the face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person either, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolated myself from all the negative people, until one day I asked my uncle to help me get in a beauty college, because he knew people in town, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his word whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for you because you are poor, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "they can't tell me what I can and can't do" They just pushed me to do better in life, I had to prove it to them, that even children can go to college. I have to prove them wrong by letting them know I can do anything I put my mind into it. So I decided to make a very big move in my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. On Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of the communist regime and all the negative people telling me what I can and can't do. So I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape and followed my dreams. I excaped from army who was chasing to kill us. but God was with me. can you believe it I made it on the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months in concentration camp,but I thought of bright site. There I meet the love of my life. we dated for five months, his visa was approved to come in US two months before mine, I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united with my boyfriend. neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable. at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face, at that time we were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement? Yes we were sharing a single /twin size bed, we saved little money and we got our 1st apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet and I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it we can sleep on the carpet" A co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with, later that year our 1st child our daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was way better than living under the communist regime. we have two more children. So we decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, and I can get back to work. On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania?" By that time have I learning enough English to my education education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, I found a job in a local salon, couple months later i promoted to a salon manager.
”
”
Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
“
Part 1. My Life Story.
- If I can do it, so can you-
I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared
”
”
Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
“
Part 1. My Life Story.
- If I can do it, so can you-
I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared
”
”
Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
“
We get through this shit, we get away, I’ll give you a beautiful life, baby. I promise. I fuckin’ swear, a year, two, all this shit will be a memory, and you might not have everything you’re used to, but what we do have will be beauty.” I nodded, my cheek sliding against his flannel shirt, my arms wrapping around him tight. “I’ll give you beauty, too,” I promised back.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Creed (Unfinished Hero, #2))
“
She laughed, and the sound hit me like a freight train to the chest. Her laugh was beautiful and left me smiling for the first time in days.
”
”
Rebecca Yarros (The Things We Leave Unfinished)
“
From the reading level of a scientifically informed Christian theology, however, evolution is an unfinished, transformative, dramatic adventure of creating and intensifying the world’s freedom, consciousness, and beauty, all within the compassionate life of the triune God.
”
”
John F. Haught (Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life)
“
The unfinished part of the world had a stark beauty to it.
”
”
J. Scott Coatsworth (The Stark Divide (Liminal Sky: The Ariadne Cycle #1))
“
May you cultivate the gentle art of seeing beyond the surface, perceiving the beauty that lies in the unpolished, the unfinished, and the imperfect. As you learn to love others in their entirety, without wishing to change or refine them, may you discover that this acceptance is not an act of resignation, but a profound act of love, one that frees both you and them.
”
”
Alma Camino
“
I am an unfinished story, even to myself. How, then, can you claim to know the ending?
”
”
Emmanuel Apetsi
“
What Ibarra calls the “plan-and-implement” model—the idea that we should first make a long-term plan and execute without deviation, as opposed to the “test-and-learn” model—is entrenched in depictions of geniuses. Popular lore holds that the sculptor Michelangelo would see a full figure in a block of marble before he ever touched it, and simply chip away the excess stone to free the figure inside. It is an exquisitely beautiful image. It just isn’t true. Art historian William Wallace showed that Michelangelo was actually a test-and-learn all-star. He constantly changed his mind and altered his sculptural plans as he worked. He left three-fifths of his sculptures unfinished, each time moving on to something more promising. The first line of Wallace’s analysis: “Michelangelo did not expound a theory of art.” He tried, then went from there. He was a sculptor, painter, master architect, and made engineering designs for fortifications in Florence. In his late twenties he even pushed visual art aside to spend time writing poems (including one about how much he grew to dislike painting), half of which he left unfinished. Like anyone eager to raise their match quality prospects, Michelangelo learned who he was—and whom he was carving—in practice, not in theory. He started with an idea, tested it, changed it, and readily abandoned it for a better project fit. Michelangelo might have fit well in Silicon Valley; he was a relentless iterator. He worked according to Ibarra’s new aphorism: “I know who I am when I see what I do.
”
”
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
“
Somewhere along the line, desert life had regrown on Julia. And more than that, it made her happy. She'd come to peace with the things she'd run from as a young adult---when she'd hoped life in a big city would somehow legitimize her dreams and her career---and now could appreciate the beauty of this place from a more grounded perspective.
Yet still looming was her unfinished business with work and her future. Her old life. Never in a million years would she have guessed that those two subjects would ever be pushed into the background. For so long, they'd been the only things she poured her energy into. Gratefully.
But everything had shifted. And now Julia feared what had once meant so much to her had altered. She felt like the mysterious cactus flowers she'd seen that suddenly opened up in the desert night, blossoming into something more than their previously closed-off shape had allowed.
She felt herself transforming into something new under circumstances. And the realization was both heartbreaking and invigorating at the same time.
”
”
Nicole Meier (The Second Chance Supper Club)
“
I’ve become a student of my own pain, my own grief and suffering. In this way, he has been my teacher? Everything we learn, we learn from someone who is imperfect. We all come into the world less than done, unfinished, our skulls still stitching themselves together. All wax and feathers, a mess of hope.
”
”
Maggie Smith (You Could Make This Place Beautiful)
“
I remarked on the quai of the Vieux-Port in Marseille, shortly before sunset, a curiously scrupulous painter struggling with skill and speed on his canvas against the fading light. The spot of color corresponding to the sun gradually descended with the sun. Finally, nothing remained. The painter suddenly discovered he was far behind: he obliterated the red from a wall, painted over one of two last gleams lingering on the water. His painting, finished for himself, for me the most unfinished thing possible, looked very sad and beautiful.
”
”
Breton Andre (Nadja)
“
I remarked on the quai of the Vieux-Port in Marseille, shortly before sunset, a curiously scrupulous painter struggling with skill and speed on his canvas against the fading light. The spot of color corresponding to the sun gradually descended with the sun. Finally, nothing remained. The painter suddenly discovered he was far behind: he obliterated the red from a wall, painted over one of two last gleams lingering on the water. His painting, finished for himself, for me the most unfinished thing possible, looked very sad and beautiful.
”
”
André Breton (Nadja)
“
We said earlier that you experience three things inside yourself: the world coming in, the thoughts of your mind, and the emotions of your heart. Truth is, there’s a fourth thing you experience in there. It’s in there all the time, but most people are so lost in the first three they don’t focus on this fourth object of consciousness. Nevertheless, there is a very powerful energy flow inside of you. In different cultures it has been called by different names, such as shakti, chi, or spirit. For the purposes of our discussion, we will use the traditional yogic term shakti. Once you quiet down enough, you will realize this energy is constantly flowing inside of you. You sometimes even make reference to it when your energy level suddenly changes. You say things like, “When she told me she loved me, I got so filled with energy I was floating on a cloud. I could feel it rushing through me for days.” In other situations, you say, “When she told me it was over, I hardly had the energy to drive home. It left me so drained I couldn’t go to work for a week.” These statements are referring to the surface level of the energy we’re discussing. There is a much deeper, core flow that you will experience as you transcend your personal self. It is this deeper energy flow passing through the open heart that you experience as the sensation of love. Because the energy can only go as high as you let it, this beautiful love experience does not happen that often for most people. Nonetheless, there is almost always some energy flowing through your heart creating your normal emotional state. The reason the energy flowing through the heart fluctuates so much is because of the samskaras you’ve stored inside. You inwardly shoved away the experiences you didn’t like having and clung to the ones you did. These unfinished energy patterns are real, and they act as blockages to your inner energy flow. When your energy tries to flow up, and it is always trying to flow up, it cannot because it hits these blockages. The energy of the shakti flow is much subtler than that of the samskaras—so the shakti can go no higher.
”
”
Michael A. Singer (Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament)
“
I WAS THE CATCHER for the Lake Luzerne Dodgers, a catcher with meager talent, a catcher in awe of Danny and Teddy. Danny was the first baseman and Teddy, the coach's son, was the left fielder. They were natural athletes: they could hit fastballs (a small miracle of hand-eye coordination that I never mastered), and they glided around the base paths with the grace of gazelles. They were, to a ten-year-old who was batting .111, the embodiment of beauty and summer and health. As I drifted to sleep at night, it was often with the image of Danny, horizontal and three feet off the ground, spearing a line drive, or of Teddy stretching a single into a double by slipping under the tag. In the early hours of a chilly, August, upstate New York morning, my father woke me. "Danny's got polio," he said. A week later Teddy got it too. My parents kept me indoors, away from other kids. Little League was suspended, the season unfinished. The next time I saw Danny, his throwing arm was withered and he couldn't move his right leg. I never saw Teddy again. He died in the early fall. But the next summer, the summer of 1954, there was the Salk vaccine. All the kids got shots. Little League resumed. The Lake Luzerne Dodgers lost the opening game to the Hadley Giants. The fear that kept us housebound melted away and the community resumed its social life. The epidemic was over. No one else I knew ever got polio.
”
”
Martin E.P. Seligman (The Optimistic Child)
“
Canyons carry the soul into unfinished grief-into the pain we’ve stifled, the secrets we’ve hid, the depression we’ve feared. Deep chasms know the grinding action of stone scraped away, grain by grain, over millions of years, they’re conversant with dark shadows. Their deep recesses receive direct sunlight only a few minutes each day, if ever. You don’t see their beauty, in fact, without the shadows. Canyons are the grand opera of the desert landscape- lavish productions bringing to the surface emotions you didn’t know you had.
”
”
Belden C. Lane (The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul)
“
This beautiful mystery woman had a very white complexion and wore her blond, silky hair tied back from her face in a braid, which she had tucked under her fur coat. As she got closer, I could see that her facial features were not detailed in the way of an earthly human face. She had beautiful, small eyes and a very small nose with a tip that somehow looked unfinished. It was the same with her tiny mouth, something about the corners looked unfinished as well.
I was frozen and I did not know what to do. Honestly, my mind stopped functioning and seemed to travel far away, wandering over my head in search of an explanation or an answer for this apparition. And then this beautiful mystery woman arrived in front of me and inexplicably hugged me very tight, with unusual passion for a stranger.
With what felt like the deepest, genuine love, the beautiful mystery woman placed her forehead very tightly against the right side of my neck and then she raised her head until her warm right cheek was tight against my right cheek, so tight I could feel the bones of her face. Her left arm held me tight around my waist, while her right arm was over my left shoulder, squeezing me from behind my neck. She did not say ‘hi’ or any word; she just kept holding me tight that I started to feel her body heat.
”
”
Frank Moses (Cactus: Life Story and Fate, With an Unexpected Twist)
“
Unfinished Furniture Colorado is a local family-owned business that pride themselves by helping their customers discover that one special piece you are looking for. They will help you find the quality, real wood furniture that will complete your home/office décor, add lasting beauty, and be something you love to show off. During his 22 years of military service, Richard and Yvonne were stationed in various parts of Europe and came to appreciate the craftsmanship and lasting value of real wood furniture. Thru their time on the east coast, they purchased and finished several pieces of furniture which they still enjoy to this day in their home.
”
”
Unfinished Furniture Colorado
“
and their voice was the life and song of their mother. Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything.
”
”
Max Porter (Grief is the Thing with Feathers)
“
I read for fun, to be entertained. I want to be transported to another world, and to lose myself in that world. I really don’t want to be lectured to on social issues, or have to read page after page about something I have no interest in or even worse, be told that just because I didn’t get the book, I was somehow inferior and not intellectual enough to admire the beauty of the author’s language.
”
”
Barbara Elsborg (Jonty's Christmas (Unfinished Business #1.5))
“
Don’t be fooled by the melodious music you hear at reception And the beautiful views of manicured gardens
For I hear screams and see eerie hallways.
You see a clean room with crisp white sheets I see the ghastly history behind
I see people who were strangers once...
...But now they never leave.
They are…
But still aren’t here. They don’t breathe. They don’t laugh.
They just are...
I see sadness, resentment and unfinished business And I wait for some cheer and laughter.
I am VILLAGIO HOTEL and THIS IS MY STORY!
”
”
Keran Pantth Joshi (CHECK-IN CHECKOUT... and the horrors within)
“
Daijiro said the group was composed of retired fruit and vegetable wholesalers on a week-long tour of America. They were visiting three places only: Niagara Falls, Las Vegas and Atlanta. “We want to see the history and beauty of America,” Daijiro explained.
”
”
Tony Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (Vintage Departures))
“
Jan shook his head, 'No. You have the most beautiful, powerful voice that any of us are ever hearing,' he said. 'How could we leave you alone? It would be against the law. I would have to telephone Interpol.
”
”
Lucy Robinson (The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me)
“
And instead of just bein’ classy and beautiful and sweet, she put herself out there when this guy only wanted the classy, beautiful and sweet
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Knight (Unfinished Hero, #1))